


Don't Come Back Without Me

by Anonymous



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Ruby & Sapphire & Emerald | Pokemon Ruby Sapphire Emerald Versions
Genre: Aromantic authors writing romances, Autistic Character, Autistic Meltdown, Autistic Steven Stone, Communication Failure, Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Wallace, Glurge, Is glurge not a tag has the word for it changed since 2006 I wouldn't know, M/M, Originshipping Secret Santa 2015, Other, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-10 01:19:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5563243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years ago, the entire scene would have been so surreal and impossible that he would have dismissed it out of hand. Seven or eight years ago, it would have been an embarrassing fantasy which he would absolutely not acknowledge the existence of. </p><p>Now, it was his life, and it was a good one. That felt overdue, but maybe it was the price to pay for being able to drape his head over the arm of the couch and watch Steven pad out of his study.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Friday, I'm in Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aliasjacket](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=aliasjacket).



> I am so, so sorry this is so overdue. Hopefully your holiday season was packed wall to wall with stuff already and you didn't notice.
> 
> For the Fanmix associated with this fic, [go here](http://8tracks.com/vergess/don-t-come-back-without-me/). To see the tumblr post (including download link and track listing), [go here](http://vergess.tumblr.com/post/136136415380/dont-come-back-without-me-or-do-they-even-have).

The beach south of Slateport was an excellent place to forget everything. The sun was bright enough to be a physical weight on Steven’s shoulders, blotting out his thoughts under its pressure. The steady rush of the waves added to the sleepy emptiness of his head. The wind carried different mixes of mist, salt and sand in every gust, until his skin felt like static, and then like nothing at all. It was like taking a vacation from his own mind.

He much preferred the white noise of too much happening at once, all of it safe to ignore, to the bobbing confusion of not knowing what to do next. Completing his circuit of Hoenn’s gyms, and finally winning a championship ribbon, had been the work of eight years of his life. 45% of it. And he’d never much considered what would come afterwards. He’d been working his way back home, his father would certainly have something for him to do, he always had before. But it was strange and unsettling, and it made him feel like a stranger in his own body, not knowing what came next. 

Best of all, though, no one on the beach cared to bother him. As long as he kept his gaze to himself, which had always been easier for him than the alternative, he could drift completely free of anything. Just existing as a buzz of overstimulation, rather than a person.

He kicked over small shells and swept tangles of kelp away from little caches of cloudy sea glass, and passed three days just wandering in the surf. Sometimes, when he checked into the hostel in the back of the pokecenter, he regretted not having swim clothes. But for the most part he didn’t mind the way the water soaked into his shoes and turned the shiny plastic dry and crackly, or left the legs of his slacks stiff and scratchy, covered in white clouds of salt. It was ruining them, but he had another outfit in his bag, and plenty of clothes back home. Once he actually committed to the ferry ticket, he’d be home in just over a day and a half. He could afford to ruin these.

He even liked the blisters and sunburns he gave himself, on his strange meditations. 

The only issue was, he didn’t know when he was going to leave.

On the fourth day of walking nowhere, he was wading knee deep in the water. That was where he met the stranger.

There were plenty of trainers who battled in the middle of the ocean. Getting to Mossdeep was just as treacherous a path by sea as reaching any other town by land. But the stranger didn’t look particularly like a swimmer- or, rather, the stranger looked like a swimmer who just wanted to swim, instead of battle. 

Which made it doubly odd when they sloshed out of the deeper water and directly towards Steven. He knew it was a mistake even as he was doing it, but it was just peculiar. He watched the stranger coming, all but staring openly when they waded up to him. The water reached their knees, too, which was odd since they were at least three or four inches shorter than him. They were wearing pants in the ocean too, but the sort of tight, clingy pants that people who were serious about water wore, and a matching shirt in a spongy sort of material.

“You’re a trainer, right?” they asked, and Steven nodded without much thinking about it. He knew what happened next. His hand had already drifted to the inside of his coat, fingers just brushing the edge of Lileep’s pokeball. It was going to be difficult to battle with his head stuffed full of salt and sun, but pokemon battles were one of the few things he was undeniably, naturally good at. And he’d been doing them constantly since he was ten, whereas the stranger looked like they weren’t particularly well practiced. The biggest issue would be knowing which punches to pull, more than anything.

“Great! I need all the practice I can get.” The stranger said, which was a good attitude that Steven could definitely approve of. 

“I can help you with that.” He said, and the stranger grinned widely enough that it had to be genuine. No one smiled like that when they were mocking or humouring someone else. Steven felt his own face imitating the expression.

The battle lasted longer than he would have guessed, almost half an hour. By the end of it, Steven felt genuinely tired. Not the emptied out, cloudy glass feeling he’d been using to put himself to sleep for the last few days, but a sort of bleary awareness of his body and his mind that he’d been conscientiously avoiding. He hadn’t had over half his team faint since he’d earned his championship ribbon. Now, all his limbs seemed very full of his mind, and his mind seemed very full of his body too. The sun was no longer the most interesting thing happening.

“Are you going to League in Ever Grande soon?” He asked the stranger, once they were done recalling their Barboach. They had two more pokeballs plainly visible on their belt, but they’d been the one to call for a forfeit, so presumably those were companions, or very, very young. Steven wouldn’t bring Aron out for a battle with a surprisingly tough stranger, after all. 

The stranger snorted, and shook their head. Their hair was impressive, a sort of deep teal that looked like paintings of the ocean- although the actual ocean was more transparent and greyish in Steven’s experience. It was also as stiff with salt as the knees of Steven’s slacks, and made outlandish peaks and tangles with the gesture. “I’m not an Ace or anything. I’m just, you know, travelling.”

“I do not know.” Steven informed them. They laughed at that, but it didn’t seem especially cruel.

“Like, wandering around, getting some practice in before I go home. I’ve got- I can’t spend five years on the circuit. There are,” They made a sort of groaning noise, and gestured expansively. It was not particularly meaningful. “Obligations, or whatever. Things to do when I get back. This is just temporary.”

That, Steven understood. He nodded deeply. “I see. I am also,” he paused, letting the colloquial phrasing settle on his tongue. “You know, travelling.”

The stranger seemed to like that answer, taking wobbly steps through the surf to stand closer to him, entering the extended social interaction radius. Well, it had been a long time since he’d spoken to anyone other than the desk clerk at the hostel. He could probably spare it. He curled his mouth into a practiced, welcoming smile, and offered his hand. “My name is Steven Stone, and you may call me Steven.”

The stranger grabbed his wrist, rather than his palm, which was an unusual variation of the greeting, but Steven had at least read about such a thing, and grabbed the stranger’s wrist in return. They shook arms, and the stranger said, “Well, you can call me Wallace then. So, do you always swim in a dress clothes or is this a special event?”


	2. Shut Up and Dance

Steven was not the most sociable person in the region. Wallace might have made a solid contender for the title, though.

Steven travelled widely, maintaining a research position for his father’s company, but mostly drifting, exploring places that interested him, and meeting new people. Gaining a slow won sense of the entire region. Wallace rarely left Sootopolis’s walls, and when he did, it was briefly, and with specific goals in mind. 

Neither of them made many friends, for opposite reasons. Steven, because friendship was a strange and difficult thing to wrap his mind around, and Wallace because he’d known everyone in Sootopolis since he was born, which made it difficult to think of them as anything but a very contentious extended family, and didn’t have too many opportunities to leave the town.

But they managed well enough with each other, at least. Hours were whittled away on the phone, and there was a constant exchange of emails. Steven sent post cards with stunning landscapes on them, so, Wallace sent any particularly interesting looking shells and stones that washed their way into his possession, to wait at the Devon tower until Steven could pick them up. And, of course, that meant Steven had to explain the history of them at length. Wallace listened to the over excited spills of information, and retained not a word of it. 

Steven started gripping people’s wrist in his handshakes. Wallace sometimes dropped excessively precise phrases into his flowery speeches. 

But, they rarely spent much time together.

Sometimes, though, Steven’s wandering problem solver reputation brought him into the usually self contained town of Sootopolis. Sometimes the problems were genuine points of contention between the democratic government and the Sootopolitan historical council, for which Steven’s name was ever so mysteriously suggested. Other times they seemed like the sorts of nonsense rumours that someone might make up whole cloth as an excuse to visit, if Steven weren’t generally the worst liar imaginable, and didn’t always give exactly three days notice before his arrivals.

Though, listening to him explain something about a potential problem with breeding licences for lines of pokemon native to the waters around Sootopolis in a perfectly flat drone, Wallace had to wonder. Maybe his version of lying was just talking as blandly as possible until no one could even remember all the details, let alone which ones were suspect. 

One way to find out.

“So.” He cut in, giving Steven a chance to notice he was talking and stop rambling. It took him a few words, but he picked it up faster than he did over the phone. “What you mean is you came to see the the great tree while it’s in bloom, right?”

“No? That is not even slightly what I meant, and I think you’re making a joke, but I fail to see the humour.” Steven replied, which almost sounded believable, except that he was smiling, and didn’t immediately start in on the effects of chinchou inbreeding or whatever, exactly, was the imaginary problem. If there were illegitimate breeders in Sootopolis, Wallace would know. 

Wallace stuck out his elbow in invitation, and Steven rested his hand on it ridiculously delicately. He always seemed so worried about his rings snagging on Wallace’s sleeves, or something equally silly.

“Come on. Maybe we can borrow some speakers and throw a viewing party.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I would rather take this opportunity to enjoy your company without having to… mingle.”

“No carvhana breeders?”

“Chinchou, and no. I suspect I was given faulty information. You would know if such a thing were happening in your own home, I’m certain.”

Wallace laughed, swinging his arm out from beneath Steven’s hand, and snatching it in his own, dragging him towards the tree with an eagerness he didn’t put name to. “You ought to get better spies. See if you can borrow some from your League friends.”


	3. Never Gonna Give You Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Would you believe me if I said that the original outline of this entire thing was "memes and fluff"?

They wouldn’t have named Steven the champion of the region if he hadn’t been able to handle the stress of it. Wallace knew that, in much the same way he knew basic arithmetic, or the address of the League building. It was a simple, well memorized fact. Which made the reality of this situation more unnerving that it might have been otherwise.

It hadn’t been so bad, when Steven had arrived. His Skarmory was a clever pokemon, well trained and with the sort of uncanny intelligence that came from being an old, old partner of a good trainer. Almost human, rather than the wild wit of untrained and younger pokemon. She had brought Steven to the gym, rather than the pokecenter or Wallace’s own currently very empty house. She had even guided him across the more or less abandoned floor, head pressed between his shoulder, half navigator, half balance aid.

Wallace had thought the noisy, clumsy approach was some challenger who had snuck in well after the gym’s public hours had ended. All of his staff trainers and anyone he might expect to be here without trespassing were fairly graceful on the ice by now. And, sometimes people heard about how young or new he was, and thought they could ignore his rules.

But his ‘no nonsense authority’ glare had dissolved as soon as he’d seen Steven, swaying oddly from side to side. There had been a bewildered moment when Wallace wasn’t sure what to make of this. Steven was usually almost obsessive about calling ahead. He wasn’t a fan of surprises, and couldn’t quite seem to imagine anyone else was either.

Then, Skarmory had clacked her beak in a wholly disapproving way- and with a beak like that, she might well have been trying to take off someone’s fingers- and Wallace had stumbled to his feet, budget balancing well and truly abandoned. Rather than tracking him with his eyes, Steven watched his approach by turning his entire, oddly slack face.

Something was definitely wrong. But he couldn’t imagine what would bring Steven here, looking like this. To Sootopolis in the dead of night. If it were a catastrophe, he’d be phoning affected regional leadership and planning Hoenn’s response. If it were something personal, surely he would have done what he always did: hidden in his rooms in the League or his father’s apartments in Rustboro, and figured it out with notebooks and long, one sided conversations with his pokemon.

Unless, perhaps, it was something to do with his father or his team. Mr Stone wasn’t the youngest or healthiest man on the planet, and pokemon battling, even in strict league conditions, wasn’t a risk free activity. It could be shock, it could be psychosymbiotic backlash, it could be some kind of moral scarring. Anything that made the league feel unsafe, and left him too rattled to get all the way to Rustboro, or made Rustboro a nonoption.

Every single image that crowded in Wallace’s head, and closed up his throat, was more horrible than the last. He was getting ahead of himself; Steven hadn’t even said anything.

The what and how weren’t important. Those would come later. What mattered was Steven looked like he was already dead on some level, and his body just hadn’t caught up yet. The most important question, the one he asked, still three feet away and paralyzed by imagination and concern, was, “Are you hurt?”

And it was apparently the worst _possible_ question.

Steven had blinked, heavy and slow, and then with a speed that didn’t match his vacant eyes, he recalled Skarmory, and threw her ball somewhere behind Wallace’s desk. Then he collapsed, folding over his knees and growling like he was trying to tear his throat open. His hands clawed at his scalp and pulled at his hair in fierce, sharp tugs, while Wallace tried to process what was even happening. Steven twisted awkwardly, and cracked his forehead against the ice twice before Wallace managed to intervene, grabbing his collar and hauling him back just a few inches. Steven was the larger of them, by far, but Wallace spent half his waking hours pushing his own body to the limits along with his team. Still, he hadn’t ever expected to be using those muscles to restrain a screaming Youngest Champion In Five Generations, who had moved on to trying to claw at his own arms, stymied by Wallace’s hard grip and the thick silk of his suit coat.

Something had been very, very wrong.

He’d spent almost an hour dealing with inexplicable, animal violence and screams punctuated by hiccups, and it had been easily one of the most terrifying experiences of his life.

Slowly, the fight had all ebbed out of Steven, and the screaming had quieted to ragged breathing that still echoed strangely in the empty spaces of the gym.

Dimly, Wallace was grateful Steven had recalled his Skarmory before it- whatever it was- had started. There was no way that a battle trained pokemon made entirely of knives being present for that would have ended in anything less than someone bleeding out.

And still, Wallace had no idea what was going on.

Steven’s breathing stopped, and for a horrible moment Wallace was certain he’d just died of some kind of self induced apoplexia. But no, he was still shaking in Wallace’s arms, and more importantly, he was staring at Wallace’s face with the same look of vague horror he always got when someone surprised him. It was a very Steven expression. Wallace hoped the surprise, in this case, was mostly directed at himself.

He almost asked if Steven was alright, but that was a self evident question, and he didn’t particularly want to recreate whatever that had been. So, instead, he went with, “Is it over, now?”

Steven exhaled in a rush, but it was an even breath, no catches or hiccups at all. He nodded, eyes wandering anywhere but Wallace’s face.

“I’m,” He said, then stopped. His voice was a shallow croak, no carefully enunciated elocution lessons here. Wallace feared vaguely for his vocal chords again, but there was hardly room to fear for many more things at this point. When Steven spoke again, it was a rote recitation. An apology that had almost certainly been used hundreds of other times and places. “I’m sorry. That was unacceptable behaviour on my part. It should not have happened. I will endeavour to prevent such outbursts in the future.”

Wallace bit his cheek to keep from interrupting, but when the little speech was finished, he was quick to unwind his arms from pinning Steven’s own down, and to scoot away from the _Champion of Hoenn who had just had some kind of attack in the middle of his gym._ He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say here.

“So that happens a lot, then?” Was probably not it, but that was what he ended up saying anyway.

Steven blushed furiously, obviously ashamed. “I am not a child.”

Well that wasn’t an answer. What kind of kid acted like that, anyway?

“Not what I asked, but okay. Always good to know I’m not a kidnapper or anything.”

Steven frowned, probably trying to unravel that sentence. He didn’t seem to be operating at full speed here. Or- no- that was an angry frown. Human angry, not screaming houndoom pinned under a rock angry. “I do not appreciate being compared to children.”

Wallace raised an eyebrow, and when Steven continued not looking at his face, added, “You’re the one who said it, you know.”

“Yes. Well. It was. Childish behaviour. And as I am not a child, obviously, it does not ‘happen a lot.’”

Wallace huffed dismissively, and said, “Didn’t look like you had a lot of choice in it to me.”

“One always has the choice of when, where, and with whom to have such an outburst.”

That also sounded like a recitation. Not that it was easy to tell, given that even with his voice aching from overuse, Steven still talked like a historic romantic protagonist. “Did you make that one up yourself, or did someone tell you to say that?”

Apparently completely unconcerned with the answer, Steven said, “Obviously it was a part of my lesson plans growing up. I’m sure your teachers had similar advice.”

Yeah, no. There was a difference between crying about not getting a cookie, and whatever that was. Wallace tried again. “Does that happen a lot?”

Steven shrugged aimlessly, and it was such a ridiculous gesture. Steven wasn’t exactly prone to lazy slouches of the shoulder. It looked alien on him, and Wallace wondered if that was another rehearsed response. He waited for an answer, but Steven just fiddled with one of his excessive rings, spinning it around his finger almost angrily. He didn’t look particularly angry though.

Wallace changed tacks. With how calm Steven seemed now, all his early fears of cataclysmic emergencies and family deaths seemed ridiculous. But obviously something had led to this. “Okay, why’d you do it this time, then?”

Steven stopped spinning his ring, moving on to flicking his thumbnails against the pads of his index fingers. Nerves? Was he anxious about the answer? Maybe it had been something terrible after all. But, eventually, he just said, “I kept speaking over Moore, during a conference call. He speaks strangely; I can’t tell when he’s finished. His granddaughter was very upset with my ‘disrespect.’”

That was it? Steven spoke over everyone. He barely noticed when anyone had anything to add to a conversation until he was done contributing. It was some kind of obnoxious side effect of being an heir, probably. Wallace made fun of it every time he dominated a phone call, and Steven had certainly never done this kind of thing. Well, Wallace hoped not.

He must have been making a face, because Steven actually gathered up the courage to look him in the eye, and immediately staggered upright and turned away. “I should leave. It is very late, and both of us should be asleep soon. I’m sorry to have interrupted your evening.”

“Okay. That’s. If you want to go, I’m not going to keep you?” Wallace tried not to make it sound like a question, but this was a very weird situation to be in. He could forgive himself a little confusion. “But, you don’t have to leave. You can stay over, if you want. I mean, you came here for a reason, right? ‘One can choose the time and place,’ or whatever?”

Steven stood very still, which was as close as he was going to get to wavering and quibbling over a decision.  Hard to read didn’t even begin. When he wasn’t enthusing about something, he just stood very still, only showing his hand literally through his hands. And he was anything but enthusiastic, now. His fingers were curled into fists so tight that the bones of his knuckles looked like they might tear out of his skin.

Wallace stood up slowly, crept behind his desk and collected the discarded pokeball. He let his shoes drag just enough to make noise, and let Steven know where he was as he walked over, and put his hand between Steven’s shoulder blades, where Skarmory had pushed him before. “Come on, it’s late, and Skarmory doesn’t deserve to go flying back and forth all night either. You can take the bed and I’ll sleep in the living room, okay?”

Steven nodded, and that was good enough. They traced their way out of the gym together, and Wallace had vague notions of asking more questions in the morning.

But, of course, by the time he got up, Skarmory’s ball had been taken off the kitchen counter, and Steven was gone.

Well. That was all right. He was allowed his secrets, technically, even if it was strange to think about all the things Wallace obviously didn’t actually know about someone he would happily call his closest friend. Still, just in case he’d given the wrong impression the night before, Wallace penned a quick email before breakfast.

 

> You can choose here, and whenever, and with me, any time you need to.


	4. Drops of Jupiter

Wallace disappeared for a very long time. Steven tried not to panic, because panicking wouldn’t help anyone, least of all the people of Hoenn who were relying on him to not accidentally run the entire region into the ground. 

He spent a lot of time working, and a lot of time hiding in the deepest corners of caves across the region, picking away at interesting rocks and working on his fossil collection, and very, very little time sleeping. Sometimes no time sleeping at all, for four or five days, followed by eighteen hours straight. 

He felt off kilter, dizzy, and not just because the demands of Championship were ever changing and always massive. After three years, certain patterns were emerging and it was getting easier. But then something interesting would happen, or he would hear a rumour that he knew would make Wallace laugh, or make that odd little noise that meant, ‘That sounds extremely illegitimate, but I find that I believe it anyway, and I need to know more about it.’ It was a very eloquent noise, even when it was hollow and staticy over the phone. It was a noise which was conspicuously absent from the robotic automatic voicemail attendant. 

Sometimes Steven visited Sootopolis, just to check. He was certain, absolutely sure, that the second Wallace came back from whatever it was, he would contact Steven. But his home was locked, and Juan had nothing to say about Wallace’s whereabouts other than that he was doing something very important and spiritual and completely beyond Steven’s grasp. He knew about the Sootopolitan legacies and legends only inasmuch as the many treaties and political accords between Sootopolis and the greater Hoenn affected his work as Champion, and in that they mattered to Wallace. And they did matter to Wallace, quite a lot, of course. The legacy of ancient Sootopolis was, in effect, Wallace’s entire life’s work. Steven had never doubted his love of that legacy, but ‘leave in the middle of the night and cease existing completely for weeks and weeks and months’ was not the kind of thing he would have guessed Wallace would do.

Not that he had ever been especially successful at guessing things about Wallace, but he was getting better at it. Predicting what sort of nonsensical thing he would say next, or presenting particularly well thought out and useful presents on the right dates. 

Things had been going well.

And now he kept calling Wallace’s number, only to get an automated voice telling him that the voicemail queue was full- likely almost entirely of Steven’s previous calls- or sending emails to an address that always autoresponded exactly three minutes later with a notice that Wallace was currently on a retreat and would reply as soon as he became available again.

It was going to look absolutely disgusting, when he got back. Obsessive and creepy. Steven knew that. It was in the way Juan sometimes put a hand on his shoulder and told him to stop worrying. It was in the way his own father sent him weekly reminders that there were “things in this world which are beyond the control of even the Champion,” and that he should sleep more.

It was very much obvious in the way Metagross sometimes broke out of its pokeball and ever so gently herded him back home and pinned him to his bed with one completely immovable leg until he gave up and slept too long and had his own overflowing voicemail queue to wade through.

Most tellingly of all, it was in the way he couldn’t focus on anything for more than a few hours at a time. Not his work, not his hobbies, not even his team. His problem had always been too much focus, too much laser point obsession blocking out everything else. But the absence of Wallace’s presence in his life itched like a bandaged burn, and it was impossible to ignore.

It was bizarre, and if he looked at his own response to this situation analytically, it was completely unnatural and disproportionate; definitely unhealthy. It wasn’t as if he normally relied on Wallace to tell him when to eat and sleep and how many hours a day to devote to certain tasks. He was a completely self sufficient person who was in charge of the health and welfare of thousands and thousands of citizens. This was absurd.

He restricted himself to one call a day, to hanging up on the third ring before voicemail even clicked on. He wrote emails directly to his draft folder and never sent them. He penned schedules instead of memorizing them, and he followed his own notes meticulously. Everything was fine. Eventually, he even managed to start adhering to his schedules by reflex instead of conscious effort, and learned to navigate his day to day life without too much desperate desire to hear Wallace make fun of something extremely important and help him think it through in a different, perhaps more successful, way.

It was one such day of being a perfectly reasonable, functional leadership figure when he retired to his rooms after his last battle challengers. His schedule was to eat and shower and change into fresh clothes before he spent his evening waist deep in conference calls and research papers. Instead, he found a familiar face sitting on his couch wearing what appeared to be a ruffled miniature cloak with a collar that managed to be even more dramatically popped than the ones he was used to. Steven didn’t even have the energy to be angry. He wanted to, a little bit, which was a selfish impulse anyway, but he literally couldn’t. Months of compensating for being off balance collapsed on his shoulders. He was just tired. 

He collapsed on the couch in his rumpled slacks and sweat-through blouse, and stared hard at his coffee table.

“Well?” Wallace asked, and Steven mentally catalogued the voice as being in the forced-low register of one of his ‘manly man’ days, which made him sound weirdly like Steven’s father. And that was ridiculous because he was wearing a feathery cloak that barely reached the seat of the couch, a possibly milotic themed scarf, and pants which had to be held up in the middle because they were cut low enough to show off his thighs. Also, he was here, and well, and looked too thin and pale, but otherwise fine. 

It was just so deeply, utterly absurd. Steven leaned into the couch, head tipping over the back of it so that he was staring at the wall upside down. 

“I realize that you have obligations which I am unable to understand the extent of as a result of complex historical and spiritual tenets and a personal disinterest, but if you absolutely must do that again, I would kindly ask that you consider breaking your vows just enough to warn me first. I don’t think I can actually handle it again.” And then, because he did try to keep Wallace informed about these things, instead of trying to tear his own face off without warning in the middle of the night, he added, “I don’t think I’m handling it right now. Which is an issue, as I have to go in twenty minutes. I hope you have a solution for this, because, I will have you know, you created this problem entirely.”

Wallace put a hand on his knee, and it was inexplicably cold. Wallace was constantly moving and working, and his lung capacity and circulation were both excellent. His hands shouldn’t be cold. The difference was jarring. “I missed you, too. But, I’m not going anywhere. You can go take a shower and save the world. I’ll be here.”


	5. Fly Me To The Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Me, a genderfluid author, to my genderfluid POV character: stOP CHANGING YOUR PRONOUNS YOu’RE CONFUSING THE R E A DE RS](http://vergess.tumblr.com/post/135889477650/me-a-genderfluid-author-to-my-genderfluid-pov)
> 
> This is that chapter.

“This has gone on long enough.” 

Because Wallace was a grown adult, with adult responsibilities and adult mannerisms, and had quite literally completed spiritual trials designed to turn her into a leader, allowing her to inherit not only a gym and a city, but an entire culture, she just huffed hard enough to blow her fringe away from her forehead briefly, and definitely did not roll her eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about. "

"If he said that to me, I'd believe it. Your words, I trust less. "

"I'm wounded. I am _genuinely hurt_ that I'm not your favorite child any more."

"You see? You know exactly who I mean. You, are a liar. "

"I am not. " She said, but it was also a lie, and not a very good one, which just proved Juan's point for him. Terrible. When was she going to learn how to guilt the youth into confronting their own insecurities just by leading questions and calling them out on their games?

She frowned and Juan pushed on. "If you don't do something about it, no one ever will."

"Maybe no one even should!" Another lie. She couldn't hold Juan's gaze anymore, which was a good as sending a gilt, embossed letter declaring defeat.

She felt like a twelve year old child, in the worst possible way. She could feel him staring at her with his truly flawless disappointed-not-angry teacher face. That was fair. She had literally completed spiritual trials designed to prove her strength and mark her as worthy of her inheritance. Just because the day to day governing of Sootopolis fell to a democratically elected mayor didn't change the fact that Wallace was the keeper of Sootopolitan history and identity, to say nothing of being the island's League representative.

She was a leader, by nature and training, and beyond that, she was a Sootopolitan. She was the relentless tide and the mysterious deep, and more importantly she was water. She kept her truth, even when she changed herself to fit the shape of any vessel and any circumstance. 

And here she was, sitting stagnant because it was easier to rot than move.

Also, she was zoning out again, which she wanted to blame on exposure to the combined "silent and unapproachable" auras of both Steven and Juan when they were being legendary figures instead of terrible people who stared too much. But, really, it was probably the fault of sitting in a cave without sun or fresh air for seven solid months and sometimes forgetting to take her multivitamin.  Either that would go away eventually, or she'd learn him to make it look like sage meditation leading to wise insight.

Technically it was insightful. She was sighting things right now. Mostly, things which involved her taking aggressive action in the near future. She had better get on that.

She threw her hands up dramatically, vague notions of cresting waves in her thoughts. "Fine, fine, you win, you're right, I'm going right now."

Juan's lips were pressed into a thin line, but it was just so she wouldn't see him grinning. They both knew that. They both knew that they both knew. There was absolutely no point-- and that was either stress or excessive fawning over Steven talking, because the entire point was that they both knew, and neither of them had to say it.

She groaned, and flounced out of the room. It was definitely a flounce and not a stomp, because flounces were a casual dismissal of a situation, completely void of anger or terror. And so was she, or she would be if she flounced enough, probably.

Setting up potentially life altering dates was probably best done in real time, with voices. Maybe even video, depending on whether Steven was even in a place with video access at the moment. The sooner that portable video conferencing thing everyone kept talking about got done, the sooner that wouldn't be a question anymore. Instead, she could stress herself out about the expectation of visuals every single time.

She opted for an email, which she forced herself to send without rewriting, because then she would be there for a week, and her reputation was dramatic and decisive, not melodramatic and whiny. There had to be limits.

> Do you want to go for dinner some time? There's a restaurant in Mauville that I want to try. I have the next three nights free, and you know I'm too pretty to eat alone.

She ended up having to actually punch herself in the chest, just to try to stop her pounding heart when he responded almost immediately- just a coincidence, he had obviously been doing something else and seen the notification- and called her "far too lovely to be left without companionship." That didn't count. It didn’t count, because that was just how he talked, like a mythological love interest who'd eaten a dictionary. He called his metagross "truly a stunning example of the tenacity and strength of life," and some of his fossils "grand testaments to the beauty of ages past,"  in the exact same way.

It wasn't a real compliment, and it certainly wasn't real flirting. They spoke constantly, and obviously the topic had come up in conversation, some time or another. They had been together- or, not together, but wound up in each other- for so long it was hard to remember that they hadn’t actually grown up together. Secrets were more a matter of oversight than anything, and few subjects hadn’t been broached eventually. It wasn't real flirting, because Steven didn't even do flirting. He understood the concept, but apparently romance just didn't apply to him any more than "knowing the appropriate time and place for horrible jokes about geology" or enjoying hugs did. And Wallace knew that perfectly well.

All the same, she kissed him before they even sat down at a table, and studiously avoided talking about it over the meal. She even dragged him around Mauville afterwards, as if packing the night with sight seeing would cover up what had been done, and what it suggested.

Ultimately, they ended up sitting on the shore south of the city, watching the waves beat against the scaffolds of abandoned constructions. The water shone oddly under the light pollution of the largest city in Hoenn. It was painfully romantic, and Wallace hated herself for it. That was when Steven called her lovely again, though differently. "You are possibly the most precious part of my life. I do hope you know what you're doing, because I don't have the strength of will to deny you this, if it's what you want."

And that time, it counted.


	6. Black is The Color

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: originally this was the only chapter.

The light in Sootopolis was wholly unlike anything Steven had seen anywhere else. In the late morning, just past the point where any respectable public figure should ever still be asleep, it was particularly enchanting. The sky was a weak, wintery blue, but the sun had only just managed to top the steep lip of the caldera, leaving the diffuse sky to fight with the lush gold of the delayed sunrise. Odder still, most of the light came not from above, but below, bouncing off the lake, dancing in ripples with the current and the breeze. Nothing ever stood still; instead every surface flowed with lacy patterns.

Even here, tucked indoors and halfway up the rim of the caldera, there was an alien richness in the air.  Between that, the humidity, and the sticky tack of sleep, everything felt soft and immaterial. Or, perhaps that was a delayed reaction to the stress of the last few weeks, and the sudden absence of apocalypse in his future.

It took a long time for him to drift out of Wallace’s bedroom and into the wide open space that made up the bulk of Wallace's home. It wasn't often that he got to feel like this, untethered from the press of politics and battle and the next impending disaster that the champion was expected to prevent. The touch of divinity people were so keen to ascribe to anyone in his position was not an easy weight to lift.

Eventually he would wake up enough for it all to anchor him back.

For now, he let himself wander. His feet made the smallest noise every time he pulled them from the cold wood floors, warm skin clinging to it. It seemed loud, to his ear. But Wallace was well absorbed in something involving sitting on the floor surrounded by loosely gathered pills of papers and scribbling notes on a large tablet.

Maybe it was the chill seeping up from his toes that left the cotton soft atmosphere too heavy, suddenly, to move through. Or too brittle. But water vapor was very different from ice, and the floor wasn't that cold. He was trapped, somehow, watching the eternal ripples of Sootopolis’s dancing light play across Wallace's thoughtful expression. The glows drifted and caught in their hair in perfect mimicry of the lake itself. It was difficult to breathe.

This was what Steven was leaving. And that spark of stolen godhood, planted in him by the earnest faith of an entire region, burned too bright for him to stay. Wallace was right. He was vain and self centered in this. But, so much trust had been put in him, and he had no right to it. Not as he was. It was high past time he earned it for himself.

And, this wouldn't be waiting for him when he returned. Wallace would. Or, they might. After all, they had promised, and their word was at least as trustworthy as the tide, and less likely to be manipulated into ending the world. But, by the time Steven had learned what ever it was that clawed like guilt in his throat, everything would have grown and changed without him.

And, certainly, this moment of careful peace would be gone.

He stood still. He watched the curl of Wallace's fingers around the stylus, and in his mind, transposed the calluses on thumb and ring finger that would be there after a few months of serving as champion, pulling forth and opening one pokeball or another a dozen times a day. Those would be new. But, even in the heat of summer, their skin would still be late winter pale. The result of spending so many hours each day indoors: battling trainers looking for the last prize of the region, or taking calls from other regional leaders, or working their way through the exhausting breadth of topics the champion had to understand. The studies alone could swallow them whole. They would need a working concept of everything that every person under their authority would be talking about, whether those petitioners were seeking guidance or permission or funding.

Their wrist was held too straight, too steady. They'd have to learn to move it more, to write with just it, instead of their entire forearm. The first few weeks would involve truly spectacular cramps. Their biceps would surely be smaller, no longer used for hours of dragging their body through the water every day. 

Would they stop wearing gauzy tops and quick drying coveralls, replacing them with something more concerned with above ground showmanship, less amphibious? Would the strange stresses of championship make them less likely to wear their binders, desperate for the freedom to breathe, or leave them eating into the skin over their ribs more often, craving consistency?

Their neck might be unchanged, but the sharp hollow of clavicles would surely soften with the new, more sedentary schedule. Would their face do the same, or would it grow thinner and more shadowed under the pressure?

What would they look like, after months, a year, maybe more, living in the steady light of electric lamps, or the glare of sunlight off the mainland’s grass and stone instead of water?

They would be subtly different. Still Wallace, but not this Wallace. How might that stranger fit together with the stranger Steven would become?

Would they fit at all?

Wallace reached for some sheaf of paper, curling over their hip, arm drawn long, eyes pinned to the tablet in their other hand. The light kept dancing over them, and some fanciful part of Steven's mind thought of them as a drop of water, about to splash against a rock and change irreparably. But, no matter what else, still water.

Still water.

And, when all was said and done, Steven was sure they would still soothe any cracked, dry throat he might return with. 


	7. Amanecer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The working title of this fic was, "Do they have Eurovision in Pokémon?" and I feel like if they don't have some sort of equivalent program, then it is a bleaker world indeed.

The first few weeks were torture. Calling the learning curve “steep” didn’t do it justice, and Wallace was beginning to appreciate exactly what kind of demands had driven Steven to screaming fits- though he was blessedly spared the impulse to crack open his own skull. Then again, if it would stop the pounding stress headaches, maybe it would be worth it.

Finding the right balance was the difficult part. Kind of. All of it was difficult, but so much of his duties centered around what could politely be called conflict resolution, and could impolitely be called teaching children to share. It was easy to forget, in the midst of another tense not-quite-screaming match between arguing parties, that the rulings he made had direct effects on thousands and thousands of lives. 

When he spent his entire morning and evening watching people who were held in the utmost esteem by the rest of the world break down into lists of numbers, complaints, and insults, and his afternoons fighting actual battles against anyone from twelve year old kids to seasoned veterans, the real effects of his actions became distant and misty. No wonder Steven had spent so much time travelling around the region. Maybe Wallace should take it up himself.

The idea of adding more things to his already overfull schedule, however, was nauseating at best. The only thing left to cut into was his already pared down sleep, and he needed those few hours to be able to function. Or, perhaps, the one hour every weekend he set aside for listening to Steven’s rambling voice messages and emails. Given the time differences- which were always completely changed from week to week, with his constant swishing from region to region chasing whatever rumours were most prominent- they rarely had the opportunity to actually talk.

So, once a week, Wallace locked his rooms, set his team back in their balls, and aggressively sped read emails and played through voicemails. In a second window, he penned a single massive response to all of them.

He felt vague notions of guilt at how little time he had, but, well, he had no time. Steven had disappeared at perhaps the worst possible moment. There had been a brief gulley of calm after the initial disaster responses had all been dealt with, and now everything was falling into a brand new, post-armageddon order, and Wallace didn’t even have a functional concept of the old system to fall back on. It was ridiculous. He always made sure to point out how ridiculous it was in the closing of each pages-long email. 

For months, he didn’t have the time to feel lonely, or really to feel anything other than annoyed and exhausted in turns.

But eventually he finished pouring himself into the shape of his new vessel. By the end of the year, in the foggy, cool winter weather, he was finally beginning to get a sense for his work. And, he was beginning to get the respect for his rulings that he’d always imagined the Champion should. Apparently, one had to prove oneself first. 

Sometimes, he even had the opportunity to eat a meal without reading abstracts and financial ledgers and political summaries at the same time. The situation between Rustboro and Mauville was contentious, but it was contentious in a consistent way, two major cities vying to additional economic freedoms and the chance to one up each other as the de facto face of Hoenn on the interregional stage. Stern’s requests for additional shipping routes through potentially delicate environments were more or less consistent, and no matter how well researched they were, the risk remained great enough that he could all but dismiss them out of hand. The Space Center would request additional funding with a methodical consistency that probably reflected on its technical merits, but the money simply didn’t exist in the wake of the disaster relief efforts, and likely wouldn’t for another few years at least, and could be relegated to the ever increasing pile of ‘nothing to be done about it, come back later’ with very little time spent reading each new proposal.

With the slow regaining of free time, Wallace even occasionally managed to take Steven’s calls directly.

And that was where the problem first reared its head. Steven was always so surprised by actually getting an answer that he seemed to lose his train of thought. Their conversations became stilted and confusing. When Steven was wholly focused on their exchanges, Wallace was half distracted by some new problem or other. When Wallace was able to force his mind clear and focus wholly on Steven, Steven seemed to drift and become distractible, responding in monosyllables and long pauses.

An awful thought planted itself into Wallace’s head. He dutifully ignored it, but every time they managed to talk past each other instead of to each other, it grew a little more. 

And, eventually, it was the only thing he could focus on when he spoke to Steven. He started purposefully avoiding his calls, putting off reading and replying to emails until the weekend was over and they had to be delayed until the next week. 

He kept waiting for Steven to ask him what was wrong, so he could broach the topic at all. But Steven, apparently very happy with his new life of meeting strangers and analyzing the properties of various rocks and learning to speak snippets of whatever the language was in a given region, didn’t ever notice. Or, if he did, he elected to ignore it

Well, two could play at that game. 

Wallace spent more time reading budget requests and explaining the thought process behind his decisions to petitioners, and aggressively avoided thinking about Steven. It wasn’t as if the demands of Championship had gotten lighter in the past year and a half, after all. He’d just gotten more accustomed to them. But there was always plenty to do to distract himself.

He hadn’t so much as acknowledged Steven’s existence for a month by the time he got around to reading the backlog of personal emails. They seemed quite ordinary, and the long paragraphs of exactingly detailed information Steven chucked at Wallace about his own adventures was more tiring than charming as he waded through it. But the newer the letters got, the shorter they became. There wasn’t a single voice mail from later than two weeks back. The most recent emails were three sentences long, all empty questions of the sort one might ask a complete stranger. How are you, what have you been doing lately. The last one just said, “Are you alright?” followed by Steven’s automatic signature.

Wallace’s reply was a bland, “I’m fine.”

And that was the end of that. If Steven wasn’t going to care, then neither would Wallace. 


	8. Rockefeller Street

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We call this "autobiographical fanfiction," kids. Don't do it (or do, I mean, it's literally your life). I still don't know how this chapter got this long.

Everything was difficult and strange, and as far as Steven could see, it was easier to just ignore it and keep walking. Wallace was obviously going through some kind of trouble, but no amount of asking what was happening got him more than a sentence or two in a late night email and an intimate familiarity with Wallace’s new voice mail message.

It all had a horrible deja vu to it. He would almost say it was worse than the first time, but that would mean actually looking directly at the situation. The entire idea of it was upsetting in a way he didn’t have the words for.

It was easier to just keep walking.

It wasn’t as if Kalos lacked for interesting things to think about, which weren’t emotionally draining and didn’t leave him sleeping for two days at a time while curled around his own jacket, trying to ignore the fact that the beds in each hotel were slightly but distinctly different from each other and it was impossible to feel safe or comfortable in them while also being completely unable to think through what he even needed to do next, let alone do it.

Thinking about Wallace was clearly bad for his health.

And on this particular day, he had a meeting to attend, and could hardly afford to lay around moping. At least he was still able to throw himself into his work, strangely disorganized though it was.

He dressed slowly, checking each article of clothing to ensure it matched, and looked up directions to his appointment through a deep miasma of disconnect. It was not an especially long walk, but he found himself unable to focus, and the sights and noises of Lumiose City were oppressively omnipresent, and the narrow, twisting streets could only be navigated in particular ways, or else ended on dead walls and entirely different points than what one was aiming for.

He had preferred the Reflection Cave immensely. It had been cool, and quiet, with just enough movement in the glittering rocks and glassy walls to keep him from losing track of time. If he needed to get lost, he could, but finding his way back out again had never presented a great hazard. That he had stumbled upon a gleaming fragment of a stone that resonated oddly with his stick pin- though he hadn’t recognized its precise type at the time- had only been a bonus.

But meetings with the leading Professor of a region were not easy to book, even for a former Champion and long time correspondent on a shared field of study. Technically speaking the entire purpose of this meeting was to put the fragment of Alakazite into the appropriate hands, or it might not have been possible at all.

The café that the Professor had chosen was apparently unpopular. Fortunate, Steven supposed. It was dimly lit, and thankfully quiet. The dark furniture and brocaded walls gave the place a sense of quiet that the rest of the city did not share. A waiter in a sharply ironed uniform guided him to the table where the Professor sat, one of the endless supply of tiny Kalosian coffees in front of him. Steven was almost embarrassed to realize he hadn’t even recognized the man through the misty separation from himself left that left him feeling muffled and distant.

He smiled out of practiced habit, and settled himself across the booth slowly. His knee knocked the table regardless, little drops of coffee sloshing onto the polished wood.

“My apologies,” was not an ideal greeting, but it was out before he could conjure anything else to say.

The professor cocked his head in a gesture Steven usually saw on Skarmory more than other people. “Not to worry, my friend. Have you been sleeping properly? You look exhausted.”

The question ticked away at something in Steven’s head. Inappropriate for the context, he eventually decided. However, as the Professor theoretically outranked him in this situation, it was his prerogative to set the tone of the meeting. Steven shook his head, even now aware that he was reacting much too slowly. But, clarity and speed evaded him completely. “Even after years of it, I find travel does not agree with me. But, it can hardly be helped. The world will not come to me, no matter how much I might prefer it.”

The Professor smiled at that, painfully wide. He was a very expressive man, just as much so in person as he had been through correspondence and publications. Steven felt a moment of relief. The subtleties of most people would have been too much to unsnarl in this state.

“No, no, of course not. But, you have brought a piece of the world to me, no?”

‘No’ rested in Steven’s mouth, but he managed to realize what the Professor was actually asking just before it left his lips. Instead he pulled a small plastic case from his breast pocket delicately, and slid it across the table for the singular purpose of avoiding having to touch anyone in the exchange of it. The entire idea of brushing fingers with someone else made his stomach turn in a way that cut through the haze very clearly. “The price one must pay to meet you in person is very steep, but I believe this will suffice.”

The Professor snatched up the stone entirely too quickly, knocking his wrist into the coffee and dragging his sleeve through the puddle beneath it. Steven felt abruptly much less alarmed. He hadn’t even realized how concerned he was by this entire meeting. But, here was someone else who saw a fascinating rock- albeit fascinating for a very different reason- and lost track of his limbs in chasing it down. His shoulders rolled lower through no effort of his own, and he breathed in deeply enough that his spine popped twice. A mantle of familiarity settled over him, and it was suddenly far easier to break into conversation. There would be no disinterested one word responses, and no glazed over looks, and no single rings before being directed immediately to voicemail as if that wasn’t an obvious sign, and no unspoken desire for more space and less obsession.

The words came easily between them, a light hearted, giddy exchange between two people who desperately enjoyed the topic at hand. It was something Steven had so sorely missed that he hadn’t even been able to realize it

It was not until the Professor grabbed his fingers in a gleeful clutch, and he flinched away, that he even realized how inexplicably desperate for an easy conversation he was. But not desperate enough to go hand in hand with someone he had never even seen in person before today.

“Ah, a thousand apologies, my friend.” The Professor said, pulling his hands away and gesturing with fingers spread wide and empty. No threat, the gesture said, no weapons, no sneaking. The coffee stain on the wrist of his coat was mostly dry by now. Steven wondered if the tiny coffee cup now laying on its side was the result of his own movement, or if it had been knocked over during the particularly active discussion of the implications of mega evolution on the looming energy crisis that faced some of the larger cities of the world. “Sometimes I forget that not everyone enjoys being touched.”

“There is no need for apologies?” Steven said, blinking heavily. He couldn’t entirely conceive of what the professor was even apologizing for. People touched him constantly. Usually he just wasn’t so burnt out by the excruciating business of being alive that he actually jumped away from it. “I haven’t been sleeping well. I was simply startled.”

The Professor nodded, his hands sneaking beneath the edge of the table and out of sight, where they could not accidentally cause more problems. Steven mirrored the gesture thoughtlessly. “Is it the time difference? I was under the impression that you had been in Kalos for several weeks now. I’m told that swimming can help alleviate that sort of circadian problem when you’re in a new area, you know.”

Steven frowned at the mention of swimming. He didn’t dislike it, particularly. But the entire concept of it was wrapped up inextricably with Wallace in his thoughts, and the fog settled back around him heavily. He supposed his interlude of being himself was over now.

The Professor hummed oddly, and said, “Now, this is the face of a person with a problem deeper than missed sleep.”

Steven blinked again, unsure if the Professor was finished and he should say something. Unsure of what to say, even if he should. Eventually, the Professor continued in a tone Steven couldn’t quite parse. Not angry, at least. “It can help to explain things to passive listeners, you know, rather than to dwell on them until you’re buried so deeply that you can no longer see what the trouble is.”

Perhaps his hard earned guidelines for what was appropriate to discuss in this situation were incorrect. The Professor certainly did not seem like he was prying into personal matters for some kind of gains, and if Steven was being invited to talk, then it wasn’t an excessive assumption of intimacy fostered by a desperate drive to confess. This situation was probably fairly unique.

Steven considered the puddle of cold coffee on the table, trying to determine the correct course of action. The dizzying fog did not help at all. He was taking entirely too long. The Professor remained perfectly, generously silent, however. He did not push, or pry, or change the subject and close it off entirely. And, perhaps he was correct. How many times had Steven relied on explaining something to Wallace, to be able to unravel it in his own mind? And with the problem being Wallace now, there was of course no one else to turn to. But here was a very kind offer indeed.

It would be foolish to reject such a kindness.

Still, it took a long moment even after the decision was made, for him to organize his words into the correct order. Or at least, the first few. Once he began speaking, everything kept tumbling out too quickly to be tracked, at least by himself.

“I am unable to think clearly anymore. Every topic seems to bend my mind back around to a personal problem that, I think, is not suited to discussion with a professional colleague. But, I cannot avoid it, cannot push it aside.

“I am not sure if you are familiar with the current Champion of my home region, but they are deeply precious to me. I would not hesitate to say that I cherish their thoughts on all subjects more dearly than anyone else’s, perhaps even my own. They have been responsible for changing my mind on many matters, some personal and many affecting the political course of my own service as Champion. And, beyond that, they bring a value to my life that I cannot comfortably exist without.

“But they are so difficult to understand under even the best circumstances. A carefully learned language in which I will surely never become fluent. And so, I am certain I have done something horrible without noticing. They haven’t said more than a few words at a time to me in months, and I don’t understand why, nor can I imagine what to do about it. I keep waiting, hoping for insight or explanation, but there is only such a profound silence.

“I cannot fix the problem without knowing it, and I cannot know the problem without being told, and I cannot be told when they insist upon ignoring me completely! I don’t know what to do about it, and the ache of their absence and the confusion of my culpability in it is a constant pressure which makes it all but impossible to sleep, or to do anything really, other than what I always do. If it is a task I know, I can have faith in my reflexes of course, but the entire purpose of this venture was- is to learn what I could not learn in the life I used to lead, and I cannot! I cannot do anything, for this ridiculousness. It just persists, and I am persistent as well, but what is the point of it, if perseverance is just pain and confusion?

“But, then, what other option is there? I have thought of none, though not for lack of trying.”

The Professor remained studiously silent throughout the entire speech. Steven would have accused him of pretending, and of being no more effective a listener than his pokémon, able to hear but not necessarily interested in following. But the Professor’s silence stretched on after he was finished, and the furrow of his brows wasn’t inattentive. The downward tilt of his lips was not particularly apathetic. One of his hands had snuck back above the table, to scratch ceaselessly at the space behind his ear. All of these suggested careful thought.

“Of course, you’ve asked your Champion directly, and received no answer?”

“They claim to be ‘fine’ or ‘alright’ or ‘too tired to talk right now.’” Steven paused, trying to judge how much was too much. But that ship had surely sailed by now. “Once, they asked why I was pretending to care.”

The Professor nodded, scratching his chin, before moving his thumb to his lips to be bitten thoughtfully. Steven’s own hands twitched in his lap, thumbs finding the smooth metal of his rings and twisting them anxiously.

“A terrible conundrum, indeed! Truly troubling. But then, why would they think you are careless, when you have expressed this to them already?” Steven stared at the table, at wondered the same thing. “You… You have. What I mean to say is, you’ve told them all this, have you not?”

Steven nodded by reflex. He surely had done that and more. Though… had he?

He squinted at the table studiously. His view of the puddle blurred. The specular highlights became foggy and diffuse. He was certain he had said all of that, a dozen times. But doubt crept into his thoughts. He was desperately careful with his words, with his expressions. People were odd about them, if he wasn’t. But with Wallace, it was easy to forget his learned patterns, his careful constructs designed for communicating with strangers. Not necessarily people he did not know, but people he did not understand.

And he didn’t understand Wallace, most of the time, no matter how dearly he cherished them.

“Oh, my dear.” The Professor said, and Steven was certain he could hear the man physically restraining himself from patting Steven’s hair like one of his wayward pupils. “I believe you may have a call to take. It isn’t too hideously early in Hoenn is it?”

Steven wondered how much time had passed in this meeting already, and ultimately had to stare at the Professor’s exposed wristwatch until the numbers resolved into meaning. It was early, but not painfully so. Assuming Wallace was keeping to anything approaching their old schedule, they would be awake by now.

Steven stood, knee banging into the booth table again. “Yes, I’m sorry, I- Would there be any way to continue this discussion another time?"

The Professor rummaged around in the front of his coat and produced a business card. He pressed it into Steven’s palm, diligently avoiding actually touching his skin. Steven was immensely grateful. “I expect to hear how this all turns out, as soon as possible. You know, we Kalosians are all romantics at heart!”

Steven nodded, and fled the dark café. He was going to get entirely lost in Lumiose’s completely nonsensical twists and curves. He didn’t particularly care. He found a bench looking wildly out of place in an alley that was much too narrow and dark for people watching or taking in any scenery. The people of Lumiose had bizarre design tastes. He tried not to let that thought catch at him, and distract him from the task at hand.

He dialled Wallace’s number, and hoped for something other than one ring and voicemail.

There were three rings.

When Wallace’s voice reached him through the earpiece, it was groggy and slurred, and not at all a recording.  “Tell me this isn’t an emergency, I only got to bed… nguh, three hours ago and I can’t, what’s happening?”

“You told me that you would lend me your help in this, before I left. Is that still true?”

For a long while, the silence of staticky breathing was all Steven received in response.

“It’s too early for this, Steven.”

“What I would like to know is whether it is, in fact, too late for this.”

“What do you want, then?”

“I want to understand this world, and the people in it. But you are a person in it, and more than anything, I want to understand you. And for you to understand me again, as you have always done before.”

The ruffling of fabric- bedclothes probably- was hushed and strange over the phone. The light had the oppressively bright quality of late afternoon in Lumiose. In the Ever Grande, it would be soft and misty as the early morning fog burned off. Steven could remember it clearly, but he found it difficult even now to imagine Wallace’s sleep flushed face into the scene. When had it become so hard?

Eventually, Wallace asked, “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

They must have decided that some horrible emergency had spurred Steven into calling off-schedule. He wondered if they were even wrong, though certainly this was not the kind of problem that usually fell to the Champion’s hands.

“I have not slept more than two hours at a time in weeks. I can neither speak properly, nor fulfill my intended function of learning and growing into the reputation I was given unearned. I am unsure when I last felt anything other than a deep exhaustion that should make sleep come easily, but instead I lay in unfamiliar beds, listening to unfamiliar voices through unfamiliar walls, and I think that I have hurt you in some way I cannot imagine, and it leaves me feeling so much worse than failing to protect Hoenn during its hour of need ever did. I am emphatically not okay. But I don’t understand. I need you to explain to me what happened, what caused this, so that I can begin working to repair what was broken. Or,” he paused, digging the nails of his free hand into the meat of his palm. They were too long; he kept forgetting to cut them. The sharp pressure was a necessary spur into this equally necessary offer. There were problems that, as his father would say, even a Champion - for one was always a Champion, after claiming the title - could not fix. “If it is not something that can be fixed at my hand, you must tell me now, so that- so.”

He trailed off in a way that even he knew was cowardly, breath coming a quick little hisses that were surely audible over the line.

The fog in his skull seemed suddenly far thicker than it had before, less vapour and more a crushing swell of liquid and stones sloshing at the too tight confines of his bones. It was a familiar feeling, and it wouldn’t help him here. He uncurled his fist and instead bit hard at his wrist, fixating on the pain of his teeth, and muffling the rush of his breathing.

“Steven? Steven what-” Wallace’s voice sounded far away. But then they were oceans and hemispheres away, weren’t they? “Steven, I swear, if I hear on the news this morning that you brained yourself on some- some kind of Unovan sidewalk I will come over there myself and put you back together just so I can yell at you in person.”

Steven bit down harder, hard enough that the pain changed shape, from pulsing rectangles to a jagged bolt. But he did not scream, which he could count as a victory, probably.

“Steven, say something!”

He pulled his mouth away from his wrist, distantly checking for blood. There was none. Good. Disinfecting bite wounds was painful at the best of times, and clumsy when he had to do it to himself. He took a ragged breath, and forced the pressure in his head back, beating it away until he could find the words he wanted. This was important. “You have. To answer. The question.”

“You need to stop.” Wallace said, their voice slipping into a tone that was almost apathetic. More importantly, it wasn’t angry. Their words were evenly spaced, carefully metered. Calm. “Steven. You are going to stop what you are doing to yourself right now. I will answer the question after you stop.”

Steven looked at his bruised wrist, teeth marks a jaundiced white, surrounded by swollen, patchy red. His teeth weren’t digging into it. The pale crescents where his nails had dug were still visible, though not as pronounced as the bite. His nails weren’t digging into his skin either. His entire body felt too loose and too tight at the same time, and he wanted desperately to drive needles into himself until he popped. But instead, he gritted out, “Stopped.”

There was a heavy sigh on the phone. It wasn’t staticky. Wallace had probably pulled the phone away to keep him from hearing it. Well, they had certainly failed at that. A moment later, their voice was back, still cool tempered. It was easier to focus on their words when their voice wasn’t thrumming with secret angers and hurts that Steven couldn’t hope to unravel. “This isn’t the time to talk. You’re upset. I’m tired. We won’t get much done.”

“Don’t care.”

“That’s the entire problem!” Wallace snapped, and there was the anger again, there was the secret hurt that Wallace refused to share, and it was unfair and it was far beyond upsetting. It was vicious, and Steven wanted to lash back out, but the words clotted in the roaring in his head before he could say them. Another sigh, this one staticky. Good. Static meant it was supposed to be heard, that it wasn’t another pointless, hidden thing that Steven knew but couldn’t comprehend. “Well, that’s obviously untrue. Nevermind. Steven, where are you right now?"

The question was painfully vague, and the rushing and the anger and the snap-tight explosion of his skin refused to let him translate it. He didn’t notice his pained noise as he tried to make sense of it, but he heard the words that came after it. “Okay, okay, are you in danger? Of being physically hurt from anything other than yourself?”

“No.”

“Are you inside your hotel?”

“No.”

“Do you know where you are?”

A thread of guilt crept into the cacophony. He didn’t know what to do with it, so he answered the question instead. “No. Outside.”

Wallace paused again, or the roar of noise in his head was too loud to hear them over. Steven screwed his eyes shut, and tried to separate the real noises from the ones that weren’t even noises, so much as pain that refused to be parsed as anything but sound even though it wasn’t really sound at all.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that. Eventually he realized he was knocking the back of his head hard against the brick wall of the alley, and that would probably hurt horribly in a few hours. He had sweated entirely through his blouse and coat, and somehow his cravat had ended up wrapped around his fingers tight enough to leech all the color from them.

His phone was lying on the bench.

The call timer read almost thirty minutes, but it hadn’t been hung up.

There was a dizzying, whitewashed clarity to the events that had led up to him trying to very physically knock some sense into himself in an abandoned alleyway, though his memory slid awkwardly away from the meltdown itself.

He picked the phone up delicately, his fingers shaking. It might have been fear, or exhaustion, or the weakness of having been cut off from circulation for who even knew how long.

“I,” He hated how his voice sounded after one of these fits. Hoarse and dry, like he’d been screaming and breathing too quickly. He probably had been. It was difficult to say. “I am sorry. That was,”

“-unacceptable behaviour on my part.” Wallace matched the phrase word for word. “So I’ve heard.”

Steven swallowed thickly. It ached. He ought to go looking for his hotel, or a water fountain of some kind. Perhaps one of the infinite cafés that Lumiose was so famed for.

“This is the part where you say, ‘one can choose when, where and with whom,’ and then I say ‘here, now, and with me.’” Wallace prompted eventually.

“It seems both superfluous and inappropriate to do so.”

“Yeah, that’s the point. To, oh, I don’t know, lighten the mood and remind us both that we’ve done this before and it turned out fine.”

“I do not think we have done this before. Generally speaking, I believe our relationship has always been one conducted with limited face to face interaction, and maximal emotional honesty, which makes this a. A marked departure from the established norm.”

“Do you actually hear yourself talk? You sound ridiculous.” Wallace said, and Steven tensed. His fingertips curled into a fist, but the point where his nails contacted his palm hurt sharply. He’d probably tried to cut his palm open with a fist in some melodramatic sensory seeking. He was distantly glad he couldn’t really recall it, but it was very distant indeed. The forefront of his mind was waiting for the rest of Wallace’s words. For the point at which they said something about being too ridiculous, too difficult, too much of a hassle. “I missed it. You wouldn’t believe how horrible this job is. Well, you would. Most people wouldn’t. I need more ridiculousness.”

“I need you.” Steven blurted, and immediately regretted it. He tried to remind himself that he was in a compromised mental state, and this was more or less what the goal of the call had been in the first place, before it had collapsed into something ugly and dangerous and proving without a doubt that he was a broken person. A person who needed someone else, instead of loving them.

“I love you, too, you know.” Wallace said, eventually.

“No. No, I do not know. Not really. I don’t think it’s the same thing that you mean, when you say you love me. If it was, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“If it was the same thing, then it wouldn’t be me loving you.” Wallace said, and that was such a nonsense statement. It didn’t mean anything. It was a string of pointless words that didn’t add up to anything.

“I don’t understand.”

“Can you live with not understanding?”

Steven wasn’t entirely certain he could. “I don’t know. I don’t think I can.”

There was a strange rustle on the other end of the phone. “Alright. Then we’ll figure out how to translate it. But, it can’t be right now. I need to either sleep or at least shower, and you need to go back to your hotel and drink something. You sound like you’re dying of thirst.”

Steven had a moment of visceral recollection, the light in Sootopolis playing across Wallace’s hair until it was transformed into the essence of the lake itself.

“Yes.” He decided suddenly. “That’s exactly what it is, and I would hate to die of such a preventable thing. Will you call me, when you have the time today? Even if it’s the middle of the night here. I haven’t been sleeping properly anyway, and this is more important.”

“Are you doing the water thing again?”

Steven smiled. Not the small, polite curve of lips that he used for introductions and photographs, nor the too-wide slash of teeth that drove his eyes almost shut when he was deep in discussing something he loved, breathless with it. Something caught between the two, soft but unmistakable. The expression felt out of practice on his face, but familiar and cherished. “There is a very real possibility that I am doing the water thing again.”

“Unbelievable. Have I mentioned that you’re ridiculous, lately? Go get a drink and take a nap. I’ll call you soon.”

“I love you, too.” Steven said, unsure how true the words were. But they felt true enough, and more importantly, they were words he knew at this moment Wallace needed to hear. Or that he needed to say. Whichever. Wallace laughed, half a world away, and hung up.

Steven went back to the hotel, had the waitstaff bring some kind of ridiculous Kalosian boiled wine drink to his room, and actually, properly slept.

But only until the phone rang.


	9. Back Back Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter IX: Return of the Fluff, or, I'm too aromantic for this so I hope it's cute because I've lost the ability to tell at this point.

It was a terrible idea, but Steven got it the moment his feet touched Hoenn's soil again, and he knew he was going to do it. There was a symmetry to it that pleased him, and there was a note of theatrically that would surely please Wallace.

The elite four received any challengers with eight badges from Hoenn. Whether the challenger had a championship ribbon, or had held the position of Champion for that matter, only meant slightly looser battle restrictions.

It wasn't an easy time, exactly. His former advisors were talented people who knew his team and his style. But being gone for three years- and another would be apocalypse- had changed everyone's game, his own included.

And, given the way they each congratulated him and welcomed him back, they probably hadn't been fighting to win, where he very much was. Sidney had only perfunctorily punched his shoulder, barely hard enough to ache. Phoebe had bounced brightly on her toes, but not actually grabbed his wrists and tried to make him join her. Glacia had told him that this was probably not a bad idea, which was a ringing endorsement in some ways. She would certainly have spoken out adamantly if there had been a real risk of it going badly. And Drake had given the precise speech that Steven knew full and well he'd been giving for almost thirty years. "The champion is waiting," was generally one part congratulations, and two parts warning. It didn't usually come with a wink and a flinch inducing pat on the head.

It was late in the afternoon. Wallace's schedule wasn't exactly the same as Steven's had once been, but between the hour and Steven's own reputation, it was likely that he was the last challenger admitted that day. He had time to dally in the corridor. Spraying potions over each member of his team. Giving them a brief break to eat a few berries, mostly leppa. Tidying his clothes and hair.

Staring at the door and chewing determinedly on his thumb while trying to think a clever thing to say.

This was silly. He spoke to Wallace anywhere from a few minutes to a eight hours a week, schedules permitting. There was utterly no need to worry about what to say.

He had to tell himself that on repeat for several minutes before he believed it.

He pushed open the door.

"Welcome, challenger!" Wallace called out, back turned to the entrance. His voice, absent of static or delay. His shoulders, moving subtly with every word. Two reactions warred ridiculously in Stevens chest. Not an appropriate place for reactions to be stored, really, but neither his heart nor diaphragm seemed to have gotten that announcement.

Wallace kept right on with his showy speech. "You have overcome challenges and made it this far because you worked as one with your Pokémon. Show me that strength here, and now!"

He spun to face his challenger, and laughter won out over heartsickness in Stevens chest. Wallace was wearing an even longer, even rufflier cloak now, and it flapped wildly as he turned. "I want to be dazz-"

"What can possibly be that appealing about cloaks? I do not understand, at all." Were not the first words of an achingly romantic reunion, but the cape was still swishing around Wallace's ankles and it was so unexpected, so very real. It was impossible to ignore. There were certainly not capes involved in any dreams or daydreams Steven could remember, after all.

Wallace strode towards him in something that may very well have been a rage, though it was impossible to tell with most of his body cocooned and Steven was too suddenly dizzy to try to work through facial expressions.

If being back on Hoenn's sandy shores had felt like coming home, then being in the same room with Wallace again felt like becoming himself. It was impossible to focus, through the achey lightness in his chest, and the airy quality all his limbs had taken on. The only thing holding him to the ground was the weight of his cuffs, probably.

He didn't even flinch when Wallace grabbed his cheeks, fingers sliding behind his ears to haul him into a kiss that promised many things, most of which would involve a level of touching and dampness that should be alarming. Fortunately, nothing about Wallace seemed likely to ever frighten him again.

"I thought," Wallace said, and then they were kissing again. That continued to happen, which made stringing together his words fairly difficult. "You said. You were coming back. Next month. You filthy liar."

“Surprise?"

"You hate surprises."

"Well, yes, but you don't."


	10. My Heart is Yours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact, although I did use only he/him for references to Steven, I was diligent in never actually calling him a man, or a son, or a husband, or what have you. This is because "my" Steven (in case you couldn't tell by now, lol) is Quadruple A: autistic, agender, aromantic and asexual. Now you know!

Having a housespouse would require Wallace to get Steven to commit to housekeeping rather than spending all day surrounded by research papers in his pajamas and dimly remembering to phone a maid service at three in the afternoon. It would also require a marriage, technically speaking, which was absolutely not going to happen any time soon. The media circus alone would be a nightmare, to say nothing of the fit Lisia would pitch if she wasn’t allowed to coordinate it. Though he loved his niece dearly, Wallace wasn’t about to subject Steven to months of handling her head on. There was a distinct difference between enjoying her shows, and enjoying her on a personal level.

Still, his life had somehow become sickeningly domestic since Steven had returned from the latest round of “adolescents save the world as we know it from certain destruction.” Each afternoon, Wallace splayed out on the couch in a loose limbed pile after finishing the day’s battles, listening to Steven rattling around in their apartments taking his sweet time in disengaging from whatever he was doing. Eventually, Steven would emerge from his den of science and either join him on the couch and launch into conversation, or hover and fidget like a silent spectre for a while, until Wallace asked about his day instead.

After that, Wallace would shower, and Steven would deal with food. Sometimes he cooked- something that was becoming slightly more frequent- but more often he called in an order to collect from the cafeteria attached to the League Pokécenter’s hostel. After dinner, of course, the ceaseless demands of Championship would resurface, but five years and one and a half apocalypses in- Wallace still counted the Aqua and Magma incident, even if it hadn’t technically been under his tenure- Wallace could finally, safely say he could handle anything that came up. 

Nights were something of a gamble. As often as not, Steven had managed to work himself into frantic knots, and was absolutely determined to stay up until dawn working on some breakthrough or another. And half the remainder, he couldn’t handle the idea of being touched, and ended up in the guest bed. But the rest of the time, Wallace had the bizarre luxury of sharing his sleeping space with someone who snored like a dying wobbuffet and habitually kicked all the blankets off entirely. And worse still, he really did think of it as a luxury.

Three years ago, the entire scene would have been so surreal and impossible that he would have dismissed it out of hand. Seven or eight years ago, it would have been an embarrassing fantasy which he would absolutely not acknowledge the existence of. 

Now, it was his life, and it was a good one. Admittedly, it was going to change again in two weeks, when Steven went off on his latest research consultation to Unova. Something about soil rehabilitation, which Wallace had tried to follow, though he’d gotten lost around the point where Steven was explaining the effects of metallic compounds on the root growth of berry trees that were dying out. The key points were that he was leaving in twelve days, and he would be gone for six weeks. 

Steven might have been the one to get confused and upset about not having concrete schedules in place for things, but Wallace wouldn’t deny that he liked knowing the deadlines too. No more wondering when their lives were going to bring them back in proximity. That felt overdue, but maybe it was the price to pay for being able to drape his head over the arm of the couch and watch Steven pad out of his study.

It looked to be a hovering awkwardly day, today. But, instead of waiting for Wallace to make the first move, Steven stood two feet from Wallace’s head, and said, “Come and lay on me.”

Which was a weird thing to say.

“What?"

Steven squinted like he didn’t understand the question, put out his hand like Wallace was a child who clearly needed to be walked through this concept, and repeated himself. “Come and lay on me. Come to your room, where I will then lay down on the bed, and you will lay down as well, but on top of me, rather than the quilt.”

Wallace doubted being rightside up or vertical was going to make that make more sense, but he pulled himself from the couch regardless, and took Steven’s outstretched hand. 

As promised, Steven led him to his bedroom, and immediately fell face first onto the bed. This was all very odd. Steven watched Wallace from a nest made up of his folded arms, looking vaguely impatient while Wallace unclasped his very dashing and dramatic cloak to puddle around his legs with a soft fwoomp. “And you want me to, what, just lie on top of you? Won’t that hurt?”

“You weigh less than Metagross does.” Steven said, which was hardly an answer. It was true, though, so presumably this was something Steven had done before. It was awkward as anything, climbing over Steven's prone body and trying to figure out how to best lie on him without jamming his chin somewhere it shouldn’t be, or risking strange bruises on his own chest from Steven’s bizarrely sharp scapulae. 

Steven made up a relatively flat surface, at least. More or less. His hips were too narrow, but Wallace had perfectly serviceable knees to help keep his balance with. 

They stayed like that for several long minutes. Steven’s breathing didn’t seem particularly impeded, though literally being able to feel the expansion of his ribcage beneath Wallace’s own was odd. He found he couldn’t help falling into counterpoint sync, exhaling when Steven inhaled. Anything else led to a sort of conflicting pressures that wasn’t uncomfortable, but too weird to be pleasant either.

Eventually, when it was clear that Steven wasn’t going to offer anything else up, Wallace had to ask. “So. What’s all this about?”

Steven inhaled deeply, and his voice sounded muffled and slightly strained when he finally answered. “I was speaking with May’s friend, the young man with the Gallade-”

“You mean the one with my name?”

Steven’s sigh was strange, air rushing out of him too quickly. Probably Wallace’s fault. “You are fully aware that his name isn’t actually the same as yours.”

They could get sidetracked down that road entirely too easily, so, although he wanted to wheedle Steven about his apparent inability to make friends with anyone who didn’t have green hair and a name starting with W, which was always entertaining, he focused on the question at hand. “You were talking to Wally, and?”

“We were discussing a particular phenomenon with which most people seem to be unfamiliar. A type of boredom in some direction for which there is no name. Even in the middle or the most fascinating discussions, it tends to creep upon us both, as though there is something we should be doing, but are not. And at first, it is very easily ignored, but it tends to become worse over time, until this formless need to act on something we cannot necessarily define, becomes overwhelming and oppressive, and robs us of thought or distinction.”

That was a very formal way of describing it, but Wallace suspected he knew what Steven was talking about. The slow descent from having a perfectly good day, into being a monosyllabic and twitchy, and ultimately needing to hide in the guest room and pretend Wallace couldn’t hear him yelling at the pillows. 

“I thought that’s what your coats were for?” He asked, not entirely sure what to make of it. Steven’s brain was a mystery at the best of times.

“Yes, but it is ridiculous to wear a suit coat and flannel pajamas, Wallace.” Steven said, as though that were a fact that obviously needed no explanation and Wallace was being silly for even asking it. “Wally, of course, then mentioned that he sometimes asks his Gallade to use Psychokinesis on him to address the issue, which reminded me of Metagross’s occasional use of force to keep me in bed long after I should have gone under my own power, and I had an idea. Which we are currently testing.”

He fell silent for a while, after that, and Wallace wasn’t sure where to go with it either. Perhaps nowhere. There wasn’t any rush. If it came down to it, they could eat in the actual cafeteria to save time before he needed to handle the evening’s teleconferences. 

Eventually, Steven asked, “What do you think of it?”

“Of… laying on you?”

“Yes. Is it easier than trying to hug me? Because it is easier, for me, than trying to be hugged.”

Wallace hummed softly at that. Sometimes it was hard to tell with Steven, when things were supposed to be for Wallace’s benefit or his own. Or both.

“I think I can work with this.”

**Author's Note:**

> In my defense when I started writing this the plan was basically to have chapters six and ten, and for it to be like 3k. Having never written for any of these characters before, and being frankly unfamiliar with the canon as well since I played Emerald twice when I was in middle school and AS once over a year ago, I think I may have really spectacularly borked some things. But, I hope you all at least had as much fun reading it as I did screaming about writing it.


End file.
